Traditional credit cards are associated with various benefits for the cardholder based on the cardholder's usage of the credit card. For example, credit card account holders may receive loyalty points or cash-back in an amount proportional to the total amount of transactions completed using the credit card. Other benefits may include insurance on the transaction, fraud protection, and other security benefits from using a credit card account. Some of those benefits are typically not available when using debit cards or pre-paid cards to perform transactions.
Credit cards today may also be associated with significant drawbacks for some consumers. Some cardholders have limited available credit, either because they are adjudged to represent a high credit risk, or because past purchases have not yet been paid down and thus consume most or all of the credit line. Additionally, some credit card users may exceed their intended budgets and incur more debt than they would prefer. These considerations have led some consumers to prefer to fund their purchases with non-credit payment cards, even though they must forego the benefits of credit card use.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to permit a cardholder to use a credit card for a substantial number of their payment transactions, and thereby accrue the benefits of using the card, such as loyalty points or cash back, while also permitting the cardholder to pay down their credit purchases from one or more non-credit accounts, to reduce the total outstanding purchases on their credit card line of credit and to provide better control over spending and debt.